


How Different We Have Become

by Gomboc123



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: FMA Angst Week 2018, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-06-20 08:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15530577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gomboc123/pseuds/Gomboc123
Summary: Roy Mustang wakes up in a hospital bed missing memories from the last fifteen years of his life. He doesn't know how he got such horrific injuries, why Miss Hawkeye can't meet his eye anymore, why people call him the Hero of Ishval, or why people avert their eyes and make excuses when he asks...





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> FMA Angst Week on tumblr inspired me to start this story, and while I won't finish it before the week is over, it's my contribution to the event. Please give kudos and review!

It is all dizzying.

The white space in front of him.

The blinding lights in his periphery.

The cacophony of voices talking over one another.

The emptiness in his mind replacing all knowledge of his location.

All feeling in Roy’s body is lost to him, save for his pounding head, and the stabbing sensation in his lungs catalyzed by his shallow breathing. He doesn’t know where his is. His head is so woozy he can’t even come up with a list of places he  _ might _ be. No, it just draws a large blank where that information is supposed to be, and leaves him floating in space.

It doesn’t register to him how he could even have gotten to this place. His body has just regained consciousness after resting for only God knows how long, and much like the old radio in his Aunt’s bar, it needs time between playing empty static and breathtaking symphonies.

Spinning and unfocused, Roy’s eyes don’t catch much of his surroundings. They are white- blindingly so- and blurred to the point that he can’t pick out individual ceiling tiles he knows must exist above him.

Things come back to him slowly, nothing completely, but enough for him to take notice of his surroundings. Everything is white, and blindingly bright. Shapes move in front of him and back and forth at each of his sides. It takes an embarrassing amount of time for him to realize the shapes are people. They wear a combination of white and  light blue, and though Roy can’t yet pick out exactly what they say, he knows they’re talking amongst each other. Faint as a whisper, and possibly a hallucination altogether, he swears his last name is somewhere in the commotion. They’re all talking about him. 

The room has a sterile scent to it, much like that of the chemicals he and his Aunt use to scrub down the bar’s bathrooms to keep them clean. His face is too numb to feel if his nose wrinkles at the strong odor. The room he’s in is too bright to be a bathroom. And there is too much commotion around him- people walking, people talking, something beeping. It almost sounds like the medical dramas that come on the radio every friday night about the doctors having scandalous affairs and the nurses trying desperately to save patients while their heart monitors go from patterned beeping to the high tone of a flatline. He isn’t proud to admit that the program is a guilty pleasure of his.

The sound next to him sounds exactly like the heart monitor on the radio show. 

None of his nausea subsides, but rather, it worsens as Roy comes to the sickening conclusion of where he is, and what needed to have happened for him to get there. 

Unable to move his head, Roy strains his eyes to look downward, and sure enough he sees himself wearing a teal gown and covered on his lower half by a white sheet. All four of his appendages rest on the table, strapped down with sturdy, padded leather so that he is rendered immobile. The bed he finds himself strapped to is angled slightly so that his head and torso stay above his legs, and he can see forward at least a little bit. A transparent tube runs from his left arm to an IV stand just barely out of his eyesight, and he can see wires coming from various other places on his arms and chest, hooked up to the machines beeping whirring beside his head. No matter how far he strains eyes, he can’t quite see them. But the thought is enough to cause an increase in his heart rate in panic. 

As Roy’s consciousness returns, so does his pain. The air in his hospital room, despite the bustling activity, is cold, and the tips of his fingers sting as if there were icicles growing on them. The starched sheet spread over his legs is irritating, and his toes twitch against the rough fabric. His face as a whole feels numb, but small slivers and spots feel wet, exposed, cut open, and completely at mercy to the chill occupying his room. 

The worst pain, however, resides not in his face or his limbs, but rather, it stabs into his chest. Hundreds upon thousands of knives digging into his skin and twisting hard, making their way through his ribs and puncturing his lungs. The sensation feels like liquid fire in his veins, coursing through his body without giving a damn what other organs it ruins. Everything hits him hard at once, and Roy sputters and chokes, drawing the attention of every doctor and nurse in the room as they crowd around him. 

What had happened to him?

How exactly, could those thousands of invisible daggers lodged themselves in his chest and cut him open?

The last thing Roy remembers is a warm, spring day, laughing along with his alchemy teacher’s daughter as she read him a passage of her favorite book. He remembers the way they swung their legs alongside the wind as they sat atop a branch of the thick oak tree in her front yard, and how sunlight filtered through the leaves and warmed them both up.

Nothing about sitting alongside Miss Hawkeye could have even come close to devastating his body to this extent. 

Not while she was there with him. 

What was this?

The number of medical professionals in the room is stifling, and it isn’t helped by the way they surround his bed, chattering amongst themselves. A number of them talk about his condition, asking one another to check the heart monitor, or to ensure that the IV is still properly administering his fluids. He sees the doctors with their pens and clipboards, writing things and pointing at different parts of his body while explaining God knows what to the nurses. The noise amounts to a cacophony, yet none of them even decide to address him. 

They appear to speak to another patient in the room with him, and suddenly the amount of hospital employees makes sense. A seventeen year old boy in the hospital does not warrant half the staff crowding around him as if he were some kind of foreign dignitary or career politician. 

“General?” One of the doctors speaks, and Roy can’t tell which one it is because their mouths are all moving at the same time. He feels sorry for the room’s other occupant. They must obviously be an important officer, and their peace and quiet are interrupted for Roy’s awakening. He attempts to look to his side, but sees nothing. 

“Sir, can you hear me?”

How did Roy end up sharing a room with someone of such high stature?

“General, can you understand what I’m saying?” Roy hears the words crystal clear, and he blinks his lethargic eyes to find one of the doctors leaning in and staring directly into them, “General?” It was the same voice as each previous address. If he could shrink back into the bed, Roy would, but he’s stuck looking back at the doctor, racking his mind as to why she’s analyzing him, but talking to some General. 

“Wha…” Roy attempts to speak, but his lips are sore, and they only open a fraction of an inch, “Who… are you… talking…” The incomplete phrase comes out as a faint whisper, and the cold air hitting the back of his throat causes him to clamp his mouth shut once again. 

But he needs to try again, so he reopens his lips and attempts to repeat the phrase, “Who are… you talking… to…” He feels a rumble in his chest and a rawness in his airway as the words come out, louder than previously, but warped and dissonant. The voice he hears is deep and gravelly, like that of some sort of grisled action hero. In short, it is nothing like the voice that belongs to him. 

“Where…” He starts again, and the discord remains. 

“It’s alright, General, you’re in the hospital,” The doctor makes relieved eye contact with him, and Roy draws in a large breath. She’s talking to him. Not someone on the other side of the room. Him. He is by no means a general, and his already clouded mind hurts when he tries to think of reasons she might be addressing him as such. He’s not an officer, and he’s too old to be babied by anyone with a working set of eyes. 

“Why…” He wheezes, the word rolling off his tongue with more difficulty than before, quieter than the woman interrupting him. 

“Just rest now, General Mustang,” The doctor smiles, “Your sedatives are still wearing off. You’ll be fully alert shortly.”

Sedatives. That made sense. The fog around his mind, and the weight that kept any of his limbs from moving could easily be explained by sedatives. Well, sedatives and the oppressive pain that worsens with each second. 

Without missing a beat, the doctor turns to the door to Roy’s hospital room and shouts to someone in the hallway, “The General woke up!”

Roy uses his energy to wonder who she might be yelling to rather than exhaust himself thinking about why she once again called him the General. Time passes, and he can’t tell exactly how much, but soon enough, two more sets of footsteps enter the already chaotic room. 

From what he can see, the newcomers are nurses, one holding metal instruments in each hand, and the other a roll of white bandages, no doubt to wrap around the wounds devastating Roy’s chest. As the two enter, others make space for them to flank him on either side, looking upon him with an odd mixture of awe and relief. The relief, he can understand, but he feels undeserving of the amazement. He is strapped to a table, delirious, and has never been able to captivate a room in the same way he was currently. 

“Sir,” The nurse holding what now appeared to be scissors begins, “It’s time to change your bandages.” Roy cringes at the use of “sir” for someone who is at least twenty years younger than the nurse addressing him. Perhaps it has something to do with “General”, but Roy isn’t privy to the answers of that mystery either. 

He’s nothing more than a debilitated, disoriented alchemy student who feels like he’s dying. 

The nurses untie the restraints on each of his wrists, then prop their patient up to a sitting position, taking care to support him on both sides, ensuring that Roy doesn’t fall either forward or backward. He’s embarrassed to admit he doesn’t have the strength to keep himself up. 

“Just bear with us, sir,” A hand tickles the back of his neck and unties the knot holding his flimsy hospital gown together. The same hand travels down to his arms and slides them carefully out of the gown, allowing the fabric to fall and pool on his lap. Head lolling forward without the strength to keep it up, Roy looks down on his chest, expecting to see the source of his agony, but is met with the sight of countless gauzy, white bandages. He questions the purpose of the blue hospital gown if his torso is fully concealed by the bandages underneath it. 

The sudden movement of himself and everything around him worsens the throbbing in Roy’s head, and his vision spins with uncertainty once again. He wishes he could rub them once or twice to get rid of the stars, but his muscles remain noncompliant, and his arms hang limply to his sides. 

He curses, and he isn’t completely sure if the expletive was just inside his mind, or if it were broadcast to the entire audience of the room. He refrains from cursing again, and decides to put his mind to use with something else. Analytical and sharp as a knife, Roy can’t keep himself from using his new position to glean more information about the scope of his injuries. 

The bleached bandages on his torso extend all the way up to his neck and down to his hips, their stark white close to the pallor of Roy’s skin. His legs are under a sheet, but compared to the rest of his body, they feel the least wounded. The gauze on his chest isn’t wrapping around his legs, and though he feels stinging and soreness running through his calves and thighs, he deduces that they can’t be as horribly injured as the rest of him. His hands are unmoving, save for the occasional twitch, and they too are covered in white bandages. Only on his right arm do the bandages extend all the way from his fingers to past his elbow. 

He can hear the heart monitor increase in frequency as he takes it all in. 

His left arm, the exposed arm, is bruised with a sick combination of yellows, purples, and greens, interrupted only by the the occasional adhesive bandage covering a small spot. What could have caused such damage, Roy doesn’t know, and he isn’t given a chance to think about it before his attention snaps back to the two nurses holding him. 

The nurse with the scissors makes a clean cut through one of the bandages wrapped around Roy’s torso, and after setting the scissors down on the bed next to Roy’s legs, the nurse tugs the edge of the bandage free. The two nurses work in tandem, unwinding the gauze as gently as they can, taking it layer by layer, prying it free. 

Each layer of gauze that comes off removes one more barrier between Roy’s sensitive skin and the cold, sterile air of the hospital. The gauze is nowhere near fully removed, but he can feel ice cutting through to his open wounds and freezing them shut. He wonders how long it takes the average person to die of hypothermia. 

The cold is distracting, numbing, even, but despite it, Roy still watches his bandages unfurl around him. They begin coming off stained with flecks of red. Blood. 

His blood. 

And the longer the nurses work, the more of it he sees. 

When the nurses finally unwind enough to reach the last, flimsy layer of gauze, he can feel the way the air moves around the hospital room and brushes against his skin. The draft is chilling, but when Roy draws a deep breath in, he feels better. The layers upon layers of crusty, blood stained bandages wound around him had constricted his chest, and the cold is bearable compared to the freedom Roy feels. 

Roy sucks in another breath, but his reprieve is cut short by a tug on the last layer in the bandage. It’s a miniscule movement from the nurse, but it stops the beat of his heart. The bandage, completely red and completely stuck, is melded to Roy’s chest by half-congealed blood and yellow pus. 

Another tug and Roy feels the area light up like an explosion. 

The nurse give each other a glance, and try tugging once more, freeing another small portion of the bandage from the trap his skin ensnared it in. It’s as if someone is tearing the skin from his body. 

Any free hands the nurses have are used to tighten their grip on him, their fingers holding down strong enough to no doubt leave bruises on his already tender skin. 

Roy can’t help himself, and with the next tug, unleashes a frantic cry. 

He hears the noise come out of his mouth, and like before, he can’t recognize the sound. It’s too deep, too gravelly, too distorted to ever belong to him. It sends his mind reeling. 

Upon hearing his cry, the nurses quicken their pace, pulling the bandages free faster and faster, leaving strips of burning flesh in their wake. Once more, Roy yells out. The audience in the room circle closer to Roy, whispering encouragements into his ears and giving him sympathetic looks. They’re absolutely stifling. 

The nurses keep their almost frantic pace, and Roy is unable to keep himself from crying out once more, the same unfamiliar roar reverberating in his crimson-stained chest. He clamps his eyes shut. It’s almost too much to handle. 

There are shouts from the hallway, but Roy is too concerned with his own plight to pay too much attention to the goings-on outside. His eyes don’t open when he hears footsteps rush to the door or the sound of glass dropping to the floor, “General!”

The sound is too loud in his sensitive ears, and shouts from a woman in the hallway roll over him like waves. It’s deafening, and if it it’s possible, Roy’s head throbs even more than it did before. But at the same time, Roy can’t shake the sense of familiarity from the stranger’s sound. 

He dares not open his eyes again, lest he catch another glimpse of his ravaged chest and panic, but he feels like he’s heard the stranger before. Perhaps she visited his room while he was still unconscious, because no names are popping into his head other than the fact that she sounds a little like Miss Hawkeye. 

The voice is too deep, too mature to be hers, however. Riza Hawkeye is a fourteen year old girl, trapped in her father’s manor. Her voice is light when she uses it, quiet and often hesitant, and it’s impossible that the frantic shouts of the hallway woman belong to his friend. 

The voice from the hallway belongs to an adult woman, and the resemblance it bears to Miss Hawkeye’s comes through her tone. The shock, relief, and urgency coming through are predictable for someone speaking to a hospital patient, but the emotion combined with the ability to command a room and everyone in it belonged entirely to Miss Hawkeye. It reminds him of every time he had gotten hurt within the Hawkeye household and gone to the girl for help. Even when he just skinned his knee or accidentally burned himself on the stove trying to make himself a pot of coffee at dawn, Miss Hawkeye could take control of the situation and quickly ensure he was healed. 

Thinking of Miss Hawkeye calms Roy’s racing heart for a second, but once again, his peace is interrupted. Thoughts of her are ripped out of his mind with the last of his bandages, and the fire in his veins reignites. The sensation is accompanied by one, last, alien shout, but Roy manages to silence himself once cold air hits his exposed chest, and the nurses’ grips loosen. 

“Let me in right now,” The hallway woman demands, and Roy finds the strength to open his eyes. 

It’s a blonde in a military uniform. 

Much like everything else in the room, she’s hazy, but Roy sees her with one hand on her hip, one hand pointing directly at his bed. She stands with her back straight as a ruler, more authoritative than the nurse blocking the door frame in front of her. 

Roy stiffens, and a pang of fear enters his chest. He doesn’t know anybody in the military, and the woman outside seems furious. 

“Ma’am, the General just woke up, and our staff is currently changing his bandages,” The hapless nurse attempted to explain to the woman but she didn’t take his words to heart, “You can’t see the patient at this moment.”

“I could hear his screams from the lobby,” The woman puts her second hand on her hip, “As his personal bodyguard, it is my job to ensure his safety.”

“That’s just not possible,” The nurse moves more directly in front of her, but she retaliates by putting a foot forward. 

“You will let me into the General’s hospital room at this instant or I will have you arrested, is that clear?” Her voice is quiet, and deadly serious, and after a moment of hesitation, the nurse steps aside for her to enter. 

The cobalt blue of her uniform is a sharp contrast to the light colors of the hospital staff uniforms and the white walls surrounding Roy on all four sides. The shock of dark color is accompanied by rubber boots hitting the ground with fierce determination, and Roy squirms as she approaches him directly. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and his body feels like it’s on fire. He’s drugged and his legs are strapped to the table, though he doesn’t think he could move them even if he tried. He can’t escape whatever she wants to do or say to him.

“General!” Her voice upon entering is quieter, but it still somehow manages to clear her a path directly to his bed. All staff members, save for the two nurses currently holding him up, part as if she were a hot knife slicing through a pad of butter. He hopes she doesn’t do the same to him.

“Wh…” He manages to wheeze, but the movement burns. 

“Thank God you’re awake,” The woman is too close now, and his eyes take all too long to focus back on her as she reaches a hand out toward him. 

“Who…” He tries again, but winces. It takes all of his willpower to breathe the next two words out, “...are… you?”

As if she accidentally placed her palm on a hot stove, the woman jerks back, her hand shaking in the air. 

“General, it’s me…” She tells him, attempting to keep a smile on her face, but allowing fear to crack through the mask. As her lips move, Roy’s eyes finally decide to focus on her face. 

If the contrast between her and the hospital had been intense before, it’s fierce now. Her blonde hair is long, most of it pinned to the back of her head, but strands escaping and ticking the shoulder pads of her uniform. The offending piece of clothing looked wrinkled, as if she had forgotten to iron it after taking it out of the wash. If it had been there in the first place- faint stains graced the jacket in more than one place. 

Roy focused on the uniform, never having witnessed one up so close before, and hoping desperately that it would calm him down before having to deal with the woman in front of him. Even in it’s disheveled appearance, it was breathtaking. Gold stars adorn the woman’s shoulders, indicating her status as an officer, and a gold rope hangs from one of her epaulets, matched on the other side by various pins hanging above her left breast, indicating honors and awards from various conflicts. The observation does not soothe Roy’s nerves a single bit, and he attempts to control his frantic, shallow breathing before blinking twice and looking into the woman’s face. 

It’s like seeing a ghost. 

That face is so similar. 

The small, delicate mouth. 

The straight, slightly upturned nose. 

And those eyes. 

Those rich, mahogany eyes that seem to stare directly into Roy’s soul. 

Those eyes belong to Riza Hawkeye. 

Suddenly, her voice pops back into his head. Of course it sounded familiar. 

The officer in front of him looks exactly like he imagined Miss Hawkeye would if she were older. All the details were perfect, from the way her bangs brushed the top of her left eyes to the near-invisible scar below her jaw from when she’d gotten into a fistfight with some of the boys in her town. There were bags under her eyes, and wrinkles crossing her forehead and curving in between her eyebrows, but it was her. All the baby fat rounding her cheeks out had melted away, leaving a hardened visage in its wake. 

But this isn’t possible. It’s not  _ possible _ . How could it be? Riza Hawkeye is a girl just shy of fifteen, too young to enlist or even enroll herself in one of the military’s academies. She lives with Roy in a big, empty house that creaks and groans sometimes, but with her, still manages to feel like home. Her father teaches Roy alchemy. Miss Hawkeye isn’t in the military, she’s laughing at Roy’s side as they read the weekly newspaper cartoons a whole week late because by that time, she can buy the paper discounted from the shop on the corner of Oak Street. Miss Hawkeye is kind, and quiet, and reserved, and at the moment, she’s probably worried sick about her friend as he lays helpless in a hospital bed. She’s not here. She can’t be here. 

But the enigma of a soldier opens her mouth again and shatters the carefully crafted image in Roy’s frantic mind. 

“It’s me, General. It’s Captain Hawkeye.”

No. Not Hawkeye. Not her. 

Miss Hawkeye’s father hated the military- he chased recruiters from the gates of his manor with nasty curses and even nastier threats. If they wanted his flame alchemy so much, why didn’t he give them a little taste of it? Master Hawkeye would die before becoming involved with the Amestrian military, and he kept his precious little daughter crushed under his thumb. She would never even have had the opportunity to talk to a soldier. 

“General?”

His world spins, and it’s almost too much for him to notice the heart monitor rapidly increase in frequency. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real. 

The last thing Roy remembers is sucking in a deep breath before he hears his nurses yelling, digging their fingers into his arms once more, and catching him before his entire world goes black. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my defense, a lot happened in my life since the last chapter. Like, A LOT a lot. Anyway, it's here now, so enjoy!
> 
> One comment = one less week until the next chapter :') Seriously, please give kudos and comment, I want to know your opinions on the story so far, and it gives me motivation to write!

“Sir, can you tell me what year it is?”

Roy hesitates. Nineteen-oh-two. The number almost rolls off of his tongue effortlessly, he barely needs to think about it. But he catches himself before the antiquated information has a chance, “Nineteen-seventeen.”

He doesn’t like it. 

“And sir, how old are you?” The nurse responsible for asking him these mundane, yet excruciating questions gives him a kind look. It’s as if she’s smiling at a child, and it aggravates Roy to no end. She’s periodically come into his room in the past few of days and gone over the same list of questions to ensure that he knew exactly where and when he was. It was necessary the first few days, but now it feels like beating a dead horse, no pun intended.

The first time she had asked him had been the most difficult, as Roy had supplied her with incorrect answers, save for one question: his name. Thankfully that hadn’t somehow changed since he remembered. Although, it may as well have, because no longer was he “Mister Mustang” to the strangers he met in the hospital. He was “Sir,” or “General Mustang,” which made him want to run back to his bedroom in the attic of his Aunt’s bar like the scared boy he felt like. Although, the attic might have been converted back into an attic again. Most thirty-two year olds had their own homes to retreat to.

Nevertheless, the first time the nurse interrogated him, she’d had to gently explain how he had gotten every detail of his life incorrect. As proof, she showed him a recent newspaper, and he still doubted her until he remembered the soldier who looked like Miss Hawkeye but couldn’t be. The nurse kept gently correcting him for days on end until he finally accepted what year it must be and how many years his friend must have aged to correspond with that. Somehow, it still doesn’t feel real. 

Miss Hawkeye, or rather, Captain Hawkeye, hasn’t come back to speak to him since the day he woke up. It’s more than likely because of the fact that he collapsed after the last time they spoke face to face. Secretly, Roy is glad about the fact. The nurses and doctors in the hospital, he doesn’t know them, no matter how many newspapers they show him, or radio broadcasts they play to him, they exist in a vacuum where time doesn’t and hasn’t passed. He can’t say that they’ve changed or remained the same because he’s only been around them for less than a week. Hawkeye, on the other hand, is a tangible reminder of the fact that time has gone by. She’s visibly adult now, complete with hardened features and a decorated uniform to match. Her hair is at least a foot longer than he’s ever seen it, and the way she pulls it back now is nothing like the way she used to let it stick up and out in every direction, framing her face in a golden halo. She has lines on her face from furrowing her brows and frowning; somehow it’s a shock to learn only fifteen years have gone by instead of twenty. 

Roy can’t help but think she’s a figment of his overactive imagination. After all, she only ever appears while he’s sleeping or at least pretending to. But every day without fail she comes and talks to the nurses about his condition in a hushed, urgent tone of voice. Roy doesn’t know if nurses are allowed to give non-family members his medical information, but after Miss Hawkeye’s threats of arrest on the first day, he figures the staff is afraid of her. She’s always been good at intimidating people if she wants to, and now that she’s older, the world has given her plenty of time to hone her skill. 

So each day, she talks with each of his doctors, seemingly desperate for some sort of progress or update. The nurses tell Roy he’s doing great, and that he’s making strides, but Captain Hawkeye hears a slightly different story. Some of his wounds are healing well, others are infected. His IV administers not only saline, but a cocktail of antibiotics and painkillers. The problems in his head are caused by amnesia, but luckily it’s only retrograde as opposed to anterograde, as he only seems to have forgotten fifteen years into the past. They don’t know how much longer he needs to be kept at the hospital, but it could easily stretch into weeks. 

“General Mustang,” The nurse breaks his pattern of thoughts in the way she knows so well, and he mumbles an apology, “Sir, how old are you?” Roy thinks about it for a moment before replying. 

“Thirty-two.”

“Great, and what is your occupation, sir?” The nurse writes something on her clipboard, and Roy wishes he could hold a pen in his hands. Since his awakening, the staff have kept him on a regular regimen of painkillers so intense that his entire body is numb. The medicine makes him drowsy, but for his waking moments, Roy is glad to be able to think of something other than the pain. 

“Sir?” Perhaps he’s gotten too used to laying down, lost in his own mind. 

“I work in the military as a State Alchemist,” It’s a hilarious thought; Roy only knows basic alchemy, not nearly enough to warrant a state certification, “My rank is Brigadier General,” And he sure as hell doesn’t know how he managed to make General under the age of fifty, even with the rank boost his mysteriously obtained state certification gives him. It means that he somehow managed to rise through the ranks from Major to General in less than fifteen years- a feat unseen in all of Amestrian history. 

With her same, overly gentle tone, Roy’s nurse finishes her list of questions, writes some more notes on her clipboard, and bids him adieu. She always waves goodbye, but Roy doesn’t even know how to begin waving back. He doesn’t like her much anyway, and her sessions leave him with more questions than they do answers. It’s exhausting to think about. 

In his numb, drugged-up state, he falls asleep, wishing once again that he’ll wake back up in the correct year.

* * *

 

“How is he?” Like clockwork, Captain Hawkeye is back in his room. Like clockwork, she checks to see if his eyes are closed, then asks for her update. And like clockwork, the doctor begrudgingly tells her. 

“The infection has almost completely subsided, and at this point, we’re able to cut back on his dosage of antibiotics,” Hawkeye breathes a sigh of relief, “However, the wounds on his head and chest are still worrisome. If the General is released from the hospital too early, he is liable to tear the stitches we put in. And aside from that, he’s been motionless for two weeks now, including the time he spent in his coma. All around, his muscles have atrophied, and we need to ease him back into walking around.”

A deep breath, “How long will that take?”

“Patients go through rehabilitation and physical therapy at different rates. The General seems fairly strong, muscular, so hopefully if he works hard, he should be able to walk on his own in a week. But after that, he still needs someone to stay at home with him and help him through his daily tasks.”

“I can do it,” Captain Hawkeye still sounds worried, but her reply is fast, unhesitating, “I’ve known General Mustang for years, and I’m his emergency contact. I can do what needs to be done.”

“Alright, Captain...” Roy hears fabric shifting. The doctor is hesitant. Well, who wouldn’t be, considering his reaction to seeing her the day he woke up? But Hawkeye reassures the doctor of her capabilities, and the fact that Roy appears to be adjusting well to the new time period he’s found himself trapped in. She’d almost be believable if her visits stretched beyond the scope of quiet periods in his sleep. Nonetheless, the doctor gives her vote of hesitant confidence. 

“And what about… what about his memory?” Hawkeye’s voice is softer now, quieter and more tentative. 

“Captain, with cases like these, sometimes it can take up to months for patients to regain their full memory, if they do at all. Luckily the General isn’t having trouble retaining new information, as he’s learning his place in this new environment, but he hasn’t told us of any memories past the age of seventeen that he can confidently recall,” The doctor pauses, then adjusts her voice to something more chipper, “But we still think the General will be able to make a full recovery. These types of things usually do take a bit of time. 

A sigh, “Alright. Please just let me know if anything changes,” With that, Captain Hawkeye leaves, boots squeaking on the polished floor and a door shutting quietly behind her. 

Roy lets out his own sigh of relief. It’s irrational, but he’s still scared of having to face her and speak to her once again. He doesn’t know this new version of Miss Hawkeye and what her existence means to the world he’s found himself in. Memorizing dates and words to answer questions is easy, but he isn’t sure if he believes anything that comes out of his mouth. Nothing is sinking in except his confusion and the aches and pains that come with being in an intensive care ward. Hawkeye actually talking to him, reaching into his soul with those brown eyes of hers and grabbing it by the delicate throat might change that. He opens his eyes and blinks away the violent metaphor his mind concocted. 

He’s going to have to live with that woman after he’s discharged.

* * *

 

His bandages are changed daily by the same nurses who did it the first time. Each day it gets easier- the stuff leaking from his wounds slows to a stop, and the bandages don’t plaster to his skin like they used to. Mostly, what they get caught in now are his stitches, which he’s informed, are not allowed to come out yet, no matter how annoying they may be. 

After his bandages are changed, he is brought some food- nothing too crunchy or chewy or difficult to eat. His face unfortunately hadn’t escaped whatever happened to him, so moving his jaw to chew is significantly less pleasant than it used to be. He can also feel some cuts and scratches littered across it, and they prevent his skin from wrinkling the way it should when he chews. But those have been getting better too, and the scabs are becoming scars. Maybe, his nurses tell him, he’ll be able to move on to crunchy foods in the next few days.

And maybe, his condition permitting, he’ll be able to feed himself instead of someone else spooning it into his mouth. That though, is wishful thinking, something to get his hopes up. His hands are still gnarled from whatever happened, wrapped in white gauze so thick that they can’t move. Apparently he put them up in front of his face to shield from whatever hurt him, and they took the brunt of it. At least that statement sounds believable; since Roy’s been conscious enough to count, he’s only been able to count seven.

With a few missing fingers, there’s no way the gauze on either hand is coming off very soon.

* * *

 

Nurses aren’t supposed to gossip about the people they treat. Patient confidentiality exists, of course, and even though his education has only been through a partial high school level, Roy knows that each and every single nurse has signed some sort of non-disclosure agreement. The doctors too, and theirs must be even stricter, considering all of the high-profile patients in the military hospital.

So when Roy catches conversations outside in the hallway about him, it’s a surprise, to say the least. 

“You’re so lucky you get to treat General Mustang,” he hears unfamiliar voices say that line all the time, and it makes him cringe, but he’s slowly getting used to the title in front of his surname. The one that shocks him is different. 

“I can’t believe I’m seeing the Flame Alchemist like this.”

“It’s a shock for sure. In the newspapers he’s always so confident.”

Flame Alchemist.

_ Flame alchemist. _ How do they even know that title exists? Flame alchemy is a secret locked away in the mind of a man who hasn’t left in house in God knows how many years. It isn’t Roy’s, never Roy’s. 

The Flame Alchemist. 

Berthold Hawkeye would rather die than let his precious research fall into the hands of “those filthy, fascist bastards” in the Amestrian military. The idea that a  _ general _ knows flame alchemy is unfathomable. What the hell did Roy say to him? How did he get the reclusive alchemist’s notes and manage to turn around and join the military? A chuckle (or the gravelly equivalent of one, anyways) escapes his lips, and quickly, the conversation in the hallway ceases. 

Both nurses in question move from their position, and Roy can hear their footsteps grow quieter until he is left alone with the beeping of his heart monitor to keep him company. 

He’s the Flame Alchemist. 

The  _ Flame Alchemist _ . 

How the hell is he supposed to feel about that?

God, there’s another pit in his stomach now. He wants to be the flame alchemist, he wants it so damn badly. That’s why he went through two years of Master Hawkeye’s brutal apprenticeship after all. It’s why he sacrificed so many nights of sleep and so much of his sanity trying to improve at alchemy. It’s how his caffeine addiction started and it’s how he lost the slight muscles in his arms from doing nothing but sitting and reading for days on end. He’s worked, and he’s worked hard to learn his Master’s secrets, and finding out it payed off at the end is such a sweet feeling. 

But the feeling soon bitters. He succeeded, but has no memory of how. The sweet satisfaction of being the Flame Alchemist is diminished without the struggle and the process that must have come along with the title. It isn’t like he remembers the test, or the moment Fuhrer Bradley must have handed him the iconic silver pocket watch. His fingers twitch. He may be the Flame Alchemist, but the secret has returned to its original master; he doesn’t have the slightest clue how to bend fire to his own will.

What exactly did he say to Master Hawkeye to convince him to relinquish his long-held secrets? Even at seventeen, Roy knows he was thinking about joining the military, and such thoughts automatically disqualified him from being Berthold Hawkeye’s successor. 

Did Hawkeye know, when he divulged? Of course he did. Of course, Roy wouldn’t resort to deception. That’s not who he is. 

That isn’t who he’d become. 

It can’t be.

* * *

 

“Sir, can you tell me what year it is?” 

“It’s nineteen-seventeen,” The answer rolls off his tongue easier than it used to, and Roy hates it for betraying him like that. 

“And sir, how old are you?”

“I’m thirty-two years old.”

“Great, and what is your occupation, sir?”

“I work in the military as a State Alchemist.”

“Excellent, General,” The nurse claps her hands together, for once, ignoring the clipboard on her lap, “Now I’m certain you’ve memorized the answer to what I would have asked next, General Mustang, but today, we’re going to do a little something different.”

“Different how?” He hates the list of questions the nurse badgers him with daily, but the thought of something new forms a lump in his throat.

“Well,” The nurse starts carefully, “Even though you may not feel like it, your condition has improved immensely since you were admitted here. We’re beginning to near the point in your recovery where returning home with a caretaker becomes an option.”

“Home?” It slips out of his mouth, and for the second time that day, Roy curses his tongue. He knows what home is- sitting in the lounge with Aunt Chris, warm fireplace crackling in front of them and the chatter of his sisters getting ready for a long night in the other room. Home is the kitchen in the Hawkeye manor, sitting beside Miss Hawkeye with a mug of hot chocolate and yammering on about alchemy. Home is Central Public Library, reading until he falls asleep and the librarians gently tell him it’s time to pack up and return to where he came from. Home is the people he spent his time with- people that he left in 1902. He doesn’t know what home is in 1917.

“Yes, you won’t be fully healed at that point, but it will be much more comfortable to be back in your own bedroom than this one at the hospital,” She smiles, and Roy looks away. He isn’t sure how comfortable his new bedroom is- for all he knows, it could be even worse than this hospital bed. He doesn’t think he’d buy himself an uncomfortable bed, but then again, he doesn’t know what General Mustang does or thinks or decorates his home with.

“How does that sound?” Oh, he must have sat in silence for too long yet again. 

“Mmhmm,” He nods to the nurse as best he can, pursing his lips shut. Her job is to inform Roy of where he is and what he is, but she failed miserably at teaching him who he is. General Mustang is a caricature of a man, defined only by rank and title and whatever other nonsense anyone could read about him in a file. Roy doesn’t know who General Mustang is. Who his friends are. What he acts like. How he takes his tea. What about his behavior causes the nurses to skirt around him, coy smiles on their faces and mouths shut save for pleasantries. 

As much as he wishes otherwise, Roy knows that General Mustang is a different man, grown from the boy agonizing on a hospital bed in Central. 

“General,” The nurse addresses him, and Roy waits before raising his eyes to meet hers, “Can you tell me the last thing you remember clearly?”

“Why?”

“We still don’t know why it was only fifteen years you lost. Maybe something in what you tell us can help clue us in,” She lays a comforting hand on the sheets next to him, and Roy stares at it blankly. 

“I don’t think it will,” If he’s still too injured to be touched, that can’t bode well for his chances of being released from the hospital anytime soon. 

“Please try. Even if it doesn’t help us, maybe it could help you.”

Roy’s shoulders twitch upward in a shallow imitation of a shrug, “I was studying outside with my friend. She made a joke and I started laughing,” He pauses, “Then nothing. It goes black.”

The sad part of the story is that he doesn’t even remember what the hilarious joke was. He can’t recall what book he was supposed to be reading through at the time. He doesn’t even know what day of the week it was. To him, that event should have been a short few weeks ago. But stupid, mysterious General Mustang must have erased the details from his mind, casting them off as unimportant and leaving Roy with mere scraps to hold onto. 

“What friend were you with? Perhaps if you invite them in or call them on the phone, it could jog your memory?” The nurse brings her hand back to the clipboard she always carries and prepares to jot down an answer. 

“Don’t bother, if that could help, it already would have.,” He looks toward the door, as if expecting the person in his thoughts to show up as if her name was some sort of summoning spell, “That friend was Riza Hawkeye.”

What kind of reaction he expected, he didn’t know, but it doesn’t shock him when his statement is met with nothing but a small, “Oh.”

“She was here when I woke up. And I think I fainted because of her. But that’s kind of hazy too,” Roy looks at the nurse’s hands, and they are still. She and everyone else who’s worked his case know Riza Hawkeye and what she did. Or, what she made him do, he supposes.

“Well,” The nurse begins to with the cap on her pen, using her thumb to slide it off and on and off and on again, wearing away at the red lettering on the side of it, eroding the name of the hospital printed there, “How would you feel about seeing Captain Hawkeye again, General? The first day you woke up, not only were you in shock, but a lot of pain. Now that you’ve improved so much and gotten yourself situated, perhaps it’s-”

“No.” 

The word is out of his mouth before he can realize it, and he would clamp both hands firmly over top of it if the impact didn’t shoot blinding pain through his arms.

The cap comes so close to falling out of the nurse’s grip, but she catches it just before it has the chance to tumble, “Why not?”

“No I mean, I’m fine. Do whatever is best,” If only that response made any sense. 

“Tell me what reservations you have against seeing your old friend? Are you worried about fainting or hurting yourself all over again?”

Well, is he? 

No, not really. He hates the hospital. He hates how white and sterile and empty it makes him feel. He hates how useless he is stuck in his uncomfortable bed with nobody to talk to and nothing to do. But he would still rather face another day staring up at ugly fluorescents than face Captain Hawkeye and her intense, earth-shattering stare once again. He thinks back to the Miss Hawkeye he knows. He can’t be afraid of who she’s become now, could he? The butterflies in his stomach and deafening heartbeat must be from some other unidentifiable feeling, right? Fear is out of the question.

“General?”

“You told me where I work and how old I am, but I still don’t know anything about what happened to me,” Roy’s statement is true, and it deflects from the topic of Captain Hawkeye and the strange sensation he feels around her.

“I’m not sure this is the best topic to discuss right now,” The nurse caps her pen and slides it securely into her clipboard, “You’re obviously distressed about something, and discussing traumatic events won’t help you calm down.”

“Traumatic events.”

“No, erm,” She lets out a breath, “Anything significant enough to inflict that much damage on you must have been traumatic. I’m sure a smart man such as yourself, you’ve also deduced as much.”

He has. But theorizing in private is different than having a concrete answer to a question. Of course it must have been traumatic. He’s been in the hospital for weeks. He has so many stitches in his body that even his nurses lost the exact count. He spent god knows how many hours in surgery getting shrapnel removed from just about everywhere he can think of. He’s missing three fingers. He’s spent time in a goddamn coma. How the hell wouldn’t that be traumatic?

But this is just like the Hawkeye dilemma. He knows he isn’t seventeen years old anymore, and Captain Hawkeye is the confirmation, punching him in the gut and knocking the air from his lungs. 

“Don’t you think I have a right to know what happened to me?” Anger rises in his heart for Captain Hawkeye’s reappearance in his thoughts. The burst surprises him. It’s so sudden, and he’s never been this quick to rage. He shouldn’t have snapped at the nurse.

But he did, and she stiffens in her chair. Something about her hardens, and even though she’s been the one telling him repeatedly over the past few weeks that he’s no longer seventeen, it’s seems that she’s just now begun to believe it, “You were travelling on a train and from what I understand, something went wrong from there.”

“What?”

“I’m not privy to information about military operations, General. And even if I did know, I don’t think now is the best time to discuss it,” The nurse attempts to return to her calm, sweet tone of voice, but it doesn’t entirely work. Her statement is too clipped, too vague. 

“When can we discuss it, then?” Something simmers in Roy’s gut, and he recognizes it as the anger from before. He pushes the feeling down, but can’t fully convince it to dissipate. She’s keeping things from him, and for days on end- over a week-, she’s sat in front of him, repeating the same nonsense over and over and over again instead of telling him anything important. 

“I think today was taxing enough for you, so not today,” With that, she stands and smoothes the wrinkles from her scrubs.

“General Mustang, I hope you have a pleasant rest of your day,” She retreats from the General, not caring to notice that once her back is turned, he’s become nothing but a confused boy once more.

* * *

 

The next time Captain Hawkeye visits him, she doesn’t come alone. Whether it’s because she’s becoming brave, or she’s letting the unease surrounding her entire situation with Roy finally chip away at her, he doesn’t know. But she has someone else with her this time. 

“It’s just so hard to see him like this, you know?” A raspy male voice accompanied by the stench of cigarettes fills the air around Hawkeye and Roy, making it more difficult for him to keep a straight face and closed eyes, “The Boss didn’t even look this rough after the Promised Day.”

Roy knows the smell of cigarettes like he knows his multiplication tables- it’s something he learned long ago and constantly has to recall. It’s something his whip-sharp mind can work through easily, so much so that he recognizes the scent in his hospital room as Double Diamonds. The same brand one of his “sisters” would light up when she took Roy outside during her smoke break at the bar and help him through his grade school homework. Diamonds were light quick-burning, a far cry from the Black Crystals his Aunt smoked in her free time, deep and rich, and with smoke that lingered around her head and followed her movements in a cloud. Back then, the smell of smoke comforted him. His sisters and his Aunt, all with their terrible, carcinogenic habit, were his home and his safe space. 

But the stench of Double Diamonds in his hospital room is cloying. Curling it’s way around the wires and tubes and silver hospital equipment hooked up to his vitals and keeping him alive, the remnants of cigarette smoke and the alcoholic bitterness of hospital antiseptic remind him that he’s about as far from home as he can possibly get. 

He doesn’t know the man with Captain Hawkeye- why he’s there or how he knew the General before his accident. Obviously, judging by his words, he’s known Roy and Hawkeye since-

“You weren’t in our hospital room after the Promised Day,” Swiftly, Hawkeye squashes that particular topic of conversation under her boot, leaving Roy in the dark about his own life once again. And about hers as well… had they really needed to share a hospital room in the past?

“So he really remembers nothing, huh?”

“Not since he was seventeen, no.”

“Hawkeye-”

“I know what you’re going to ask and it’s a no,” One of them sighs, “He has no idea who you are and it might cause him more distress than it’s worth right now.”

“I know what happened with  _ you _ , but it’s been two weeks since then and the nurses said they’ve-”

“What I said is final,  _ Lieutenant _ ,” The room falls silent once again, and something twists in Roy’s gut. 

“Yes Ma’am,” Hawkeye’s Lieutenant says it to fill the silence, but a bitter, two word statement can’t fill the enormity of the blank, white room.

Instead, the air around them is frighteningly thin, so much so that he can hear the dejected sighs of both Hawkeye and her subordinate above the din of the hospital and through the fading haze of Double Diamond smoke. He can’t claim to know the lieutenant, and he can’t say he knows Captain Hawkeye either, not really, but through their frustration, he can sense real pain. More pain than the average subordinates should have for their superior. 

How does General Mustang know the lieutenant? Not in the sense of how they function in the office, but rather, what is their relationship outside of work? Are they friends?

Another wave of unease rolls through Roy’s gut. Being extroverted and charming as Madame Christmas molded him to be, he has to have made new friends in the fifteen years that passed him by. There’s an entire circle of people outside the hospital and outside the confines of Roy’s broken mind that he’s spent years building relationships with, and he doesn’t remember them. 

Does he have a partner? Someone who General Mustang whispered sweet nothings to, but now lays alone in their bed, waiting for him to come home and kiss their loneliness away? Roy finds it increasingly difficult to remain quiet, with closed eyes and a neutral expression on his face. But when he really thinks about it, about the fact that he’s gotten no other visits, and that Captain Hawkeye is his emergency contact, he realizes that even if he were dating someone at the time of his injury, it was nothing serious. 

He wishes he could pin down the exact feelings he has about that revelation, because as big of a relief it is knowing he didn’t leave a lover alone, he’s thirty two years old and has no one. 

One of his visitors shifts, the fabric of their wool military uniform louder than it should be, “Havoc, I’m sorry.”

“Hey Riza, it’s okay.”

“No it’s not,” For the first time since he woke up, Roy hears something in Captain Hawkeye’s- in  _ Riza’s _ \- voice waver, “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that, no matter how stressful this all is.”

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

“I know,” A sigh,  “I just wish I could talk to  _ him _ .”

“You’ll be able to Riza, the two of you have gone through harder shit than this,” There’s another pause, and Roy inhales with his mouth, disrupting the steady beat of his heart monitor. 

Both Captain Hawkeye and Lieutenant… Havoc, was it, know things he doesn’t, and his prying nature almost gets the better of him before he can calm down once more. He needs to relax, otherwise the curiosity that killed the cat will succeed in bringing him down as well. In his current, bedridden state, it wouldn’t be a difficult feat. Yet again, he pictures this new, harsh version of Miss Hawkeye staring him down, eyes sharp and mouth in a thin line like her father’s. That image is enough to superglue his eyelids together until he absolutely has to pry them open some other day. Not today. 

He wants to know what Hawkeye and Havoc do so bad, but his trepidation around them is stronger, and he hates himself for it. Whether or not the three of them are friends (though he would wager  _ Riza _ and Havoc are), they cared enough to visit him. The same couldn’t be said about any of the other supposed friends he thinks must exist for him somewhere outside. Captain Hawkeye cared enough to visit him every chance she got even when she was obviously stressed and in pain and and so thoroughly exhausted. 

So why is Roy afraid to talk to her?

Why the hell is she so afraid to talk to him?


End file.
